Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Paying students for good grades

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

Capital gains, incentives, etc.

For the past few months, my “policy discussion group” in grad school has been eating, drinking, and sleeping on the issue of the “unsatisfactory reading levels of homeless children”.  Believe me when I say we have been fully immersed in this topic – our current reference list as of 7:55pm on 4/25/10 is four pages long.  We have been pouring over journals, magazines, websites, and government publications, trying to learn more about 1) this issue and 2) crafting informed policy proposals.  After starting with a rather broad focus, we decided to narrow our focus to homeless children in Washington State.

Our final project is to craft a policy proposal that could reasonably be submitted for implementation.  We were to propose two different policy responses:  one from a “constrained” view and the other from an “unconstrained” view (see Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles for more on constrained/unconstrained visions of society”).  I ended up working on our “constrained” proposal – paying homeless students for positive behavior and academic achievements.

clip_image002Paying students for behaving or getting good grades is not a new phenomenon (albeit, it may be novel…and very appealing to students.  I would love to still be paid for good grades.  Oh, wait.  Is that what scholarships are all about?).  I remember my mother giving me $5 for every “A” I got on my report card in 4th grade.  When she realized I was most likely going to be a straight-A student for the rest of my academic career (this epiphany happened at the end of 5th grade), she stopped paying me.  It was a sad day, but I wasn’t the only one in my class who had parents who tried to motivate them through cash payments or plain old special activities and items.  I knew this kind of motivation was going on, on a small scale, but I had no idea until now it was being considered and implemented on a district-wide scale, and had, in fact, been implemented for some time.

TIME magazine recently published an article entitled Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?, examining the different programs and experiments being conducted in different cities.  One of the largest studies is being conducted in Washington DC – 14 schools in collaboration with Harvard economist and researcher Roland Fryer and Harvard’s Education Innovation Laboratory.  Students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade earn up to $100 every two weeks ($1500 per year) for various criteria: attendance, homework completion, and other achievements.  Similar programs exist in New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta (similar, but not the same).

It seems to be working so far.

image6121450[1] In January 2010, CBS News conducted a survey as part of the “Where America Stands” series that found that most Americans oppose paying students for good grades, behavior, etc.  The poll also found that older Americans (65+) strongly oppose the practice, but parents who had children in K-12 tended to support it more.  The article doesn’t really state why such opposition exists, but the biggest critique of incentive programs always seems to end up on one thing:  paying students will kill their intrinsic motivation to learn for the sake of learning.

I’m not sure I agree, and I think there is a bit of hypocrisy present in telling students they should learn for learning’s sake without the possibility of tangible rewards.

Should you be working for working’s sake, and your employer not give you a paycheck?

“Well, that’s different!”  I’m not so sure.  We are told to aim for “A’s” in school…why?  So we can get into a good college/university.  We want to graduate from those universities with degrees…why?  So we can get a job…a well-paying job (at least we hope.  I ended up a teacher.  I must have missed the memo about well-paying jobs).  Every little motivator counts, and when it comes to money, the motivation increases dramatically.

And what’s so wrong about money?  Why do we feel differently when the motivator isn’t money?  No one questions a teacher who promises the class a special field trip if they behave all semester.  Or if a professor says they will cancel a quiz if everyone performs well on a project.  Or if a parent says they will start saving up as a family for a special vacation if their kids do well during the school year.  But why the (almost) hostile reaction when money is involved?

Back on track…

Of course, when the money starts dwindling (you aren’t being paid enough or at least what you think you’re worth), you look for other options…or quit altogether.  Sure, some students may stop working hard if the monetary incentives decrease, but here’s something I’ve noticed about students in my years (albeit few) as a teacher:  students who want to learn and want to do well tend to do so regardless of the motivators placed before them. I don’t know why.  Maybe their parents instilled a great work-ethic in them, maybe they already have intrinsic motivators (self satisfaction) to keep them going, but overall, I think it’s a choice.  Students make a choice to do well, we make a choice to be good employees, and those choices can distinguish us from the rest regardless of the situation.

So, should students be paid for good grades?  I don’t know yet.  My current opinion is that it depends on the situation.  I see the pros and cons, and my opinion may change in the coming months and years.

What do you think?

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Posted in Education, In the News, Observations on Life | 1 Comment »

Why Students Use Wikipedia

Monday, March 29th, 2010

[Sometimes, I really wish we had a lake nearby where I could sit, dip my feet in, and ponder life’s mysteries.

Alas, the closest thing to a “lake” we have here in Santa Clarita is Bridgeport which is 1) too far away from where I am, and 2) too toxic-looking at the moment to ever consider dipping one’s feet in.

But, in a few days, I shall dip my toes into the cold ocean.  I shall relish it.]

A few months ago, I discovered a rather useful tool called InstaPaper.  It’s free and ridiculously easy to use.  It also has a free, downloadable app for my Android phone which makes reading articles so much more convenient on the run.  This article is one of those I saved awhile back.

Did you see the research paper on First Monday entitled, How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course-related research?  Written by Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg of the Information School at the University of Washington, the paper focuses on how students really use Wikipedia.  I agree with how they start off their introduction – “Want to stir up a room full of college faculty and librarians?  Mention Wikipedia.”

I mentioned Wikipedia as part of my presentation at the CA-AAFCS State & Western Region conference a few weeks back, and I saw some smirks in the audience.  My point wasn’t Wikipedia itself but the wiki software; it didn’t matter for a few of the attendees.  Wikipedia was Wikipedia, bastion of misinformation that it is.

I believe Wikipedia has its good points, but many faculty members and teachers cling to their distrust of the site and its contents.  They encourage students to stay away from it during their research lest a student “quote” misinformation from it, but are students really using Wikipedia for their research?

According to Head and Eisenberg, maybe not.  “A majority of respondents frequently used Wikipedia for background information, but less often than they used other common resources, such as course readings and Google.”  Their initial findings suggest that those in the “hard sciences” tend to use Wikipedia more, and those that do use Wikipedia use it “in combination with other information resources.”

A couple of interesting points from their research (my comments in parentheses):

So what’s Wikipedia’s true appeal?  According to the authors, “Wikipedia’s information utility is tied to four C’s it delivers – currency, coverage, comprehensibility, and convenience.”  (emphasis added)  I think we can learn from that.

I would encourage you to read the article for yourself and not be overwhelmed by the technical nature of the writing.

And check out InstaPaper.com while you’re at it.

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Confessions of a Spoken Communication Professor

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

time1It is currently 6:38 pm on Wednesday night.

That means I have 2 days and 21 hours (or 4186-ish minutes) before my presentation at the State Conference on Saturday.

 

Never mind.  The minutes went down.

I have always told my students never to wait until the night before to prepare their speeches.  Most people can work well under pressure, but when it comes to public speaking, most who prepare their presentations under time pressure generally do not do well.  Why?

Because they rushed their gathering of information.

Because they did not practice.

Because they are generally thinking of their deadline instead of their topic.

Because they won’t get much sleep (less than normal, probably).

Because they won’t meet my outline submission deadline. *wink, wink*

…but mainly because they won’t be as familiar with their content as they could have been if they had started sooner. (There are some exceptions)

 

According to my timer, I’m down to 4183 minutes.

 

I’ve got two days before my presentation, and I’ve been working on my PowerPoint and content intermittently over the past few days now.  But I’m not done yet.

And I’m feeling the pressure.

Even if I have a couple days left.

Because those days will be full of other responsibilities.

And then I’ll present.

I’ll get up before my audience (thanks in advance for coming!).

And I’ll present my content.

I’ll present my thoughts.

I’ll present what I’ve been eating, drinking, sleeping (metaphorically, of course) for the past few days (but truly, for several years of my life).

 

4178 minutes.

 

Confession #1 – I should have started preparing sooner.

Confession #2 – I feel pressure, too!

Confession #3 – I will be in professional dress when I present.

Confession #4 – I feel nervous, too, before presenting. (It’s a good thing!)

Confession #5 – I really want you guys to succeed when you present…but your preparation does matter.  Preparing two days in advance can actually help you more than a few hours the night before.

Confession #6 – I have a really cool, new clicker that I get to use when I present, and that makes me cooler than you.  Just kidding.  Y’all will get to use it for your informative speeches.

 

(Speaking of which, how are you guys doing?)

 

4175 minutes.

 

And I’m off to finish my PowerPoint.

Wish me luck!

Cheers,

Corinne a.k.a. “Prof. Thomas”

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